United Way Leading Charge to End Homelessness in Winnipeg

A community task force has been assembled to end homelessness in Winnipeg over the next decade.

The United Way of Winnipeg is leading the charge to build on successful strategies in other cities across North America, and will create a new organization tasked with carrying out 38 strategy recommendations under four key focus areas: prevention, creating a person-centred system of care, housing supply and measurement.

“We need to move from managing homelessness to ending it,” said Rob Johnston, co-chair of the Community Task Force to End Homelessness and regional president of RBC. “We need a system that works better for people who are homeless or who are at risk of being homeless. Some may ask if it is really possible to end homelessness. We believe it is, and that we shouldn’t settle for anything less.”

Some of the short-term targets by 2016/17 include to reduce the number of shelter users that are chronically homeless by 20%, and reduce the number of people with an average length of stay in an emergency shelter of more than seven consecutive days by 50%.

On any given night, there are 350 people staying in one of the city’s homeless shelters.